Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5
Let me be honest right from the start. Guitars don’t play such a big part in my music. Nevertheless Guitar Rig always amazed me, since I tried out version 1. Sending synth through amps, drowning them in distortion and thickening them up with amps was always something that was quite rewarding with Guitar Rig. Plus the internal modulation system is really thought out and versatile, the effects and the amps sound fantastic. Version 5 is no exception in this regards. As Guitar Rig is available for a couple of years now, this review will give you an overview about the new effects and amps of Guitar Rig 5.
The most prominent add-ons in Guitar Rig 5 are probably the two new amps and a new version of the control room module. The control room module acts similar to a regular re-amp application in a studio: The guitar signal can be send through various different cabinets – you can select between 29 different ones . Five different microphone simulations are available to recapture the sound. The great thing about it is, that you can re-amp your signal with eight different configurations in parallel, which gives you quite an amount of control over the signal and may result in some really thick and juicy sounds. The workflow and controls feel a little flimsy, though: A missing global levelling option for all eight re-amping slots including level meters and dedicated gain controlers make adjustments a little tedious.
The two new amps are modelled after two high gain amps giving you a lot of drive. Both feature two channels offering a very wide sound palette and are suitable for a number of different scenarios. Their sound is sharp and cutting. If you want to, their sound can also be quite thick – but more in a rock not a shoegaze sense. The Van 51 amp sounds a little woodier and round, while the Solo+ has a more cutting, aggressive side to it.
When it comes to new effects, the new Resochord effect is probably the most exciting addition in terms of sounddesign. Being based on a resonator with two different modes (chord & string) it turns the incoming signals into shimmering, glacial drones and pads. Maybe the effect doesn’t handle hot distorted signals as well as I though it would, but when inserted after a distortion or a fuzz there’s still a little bleed of the original signal even when the mixing knob is turned completely wet. Maybe it’s just due to the design of the effect, but that behaviour is something I haven’t witnessed from other resonators – including the ones from Native Instruments. Even if it is not entended to work that way, it sounds lovely. With this effect, one limitation of the otherwise great Analog Sequencer Modulator effect becomes apparent. The sequencer only offers step resolutions as low as quarter notes. In combination with the resochord effect, slower tempos such as full note steps or even longer ones would have been great for slower Resochord modulations such as chord progressions. But maybe that’s something Native Instruments addresses in a future update; fingers crossed.
The newly added Little Reflektor convolution reverb leaves me cold, to be honest. There is just too few parameters to control. The effect only features eight different impulses from small to extra large, which can not be exchanged for other impulses at all The controls of the unit feel a little limited as well, because it only has a dry/wet parameter as well as a decay and a lowcut. Nevertheless, the reverb itself sounds great though. But from my perspective a lot of the fun with convolution reverbs gets lost, when there’s no possibility to add new impulse responses and play with them.
The new Vintage Verb on the other side is really amazing and a total winner. It seems to be also convolution based, because the different reverb modes for plate and spring verbs take a second to load. The sound is dense and shimmering. A possibility to adjust the decay or the length of the reverb would have been nice and is definitively missed.
A huge advantage in terms of sounddesign and playing live is the new Container effect. It allows the user to built sub racks with Guitar Rig effects that can be controlled via macro controllers. This way Guitar Rig picks up a little bit of the system from the just discontinued Kore product line. I can imagine that this add-on helps to improve the integration with Maschine as well and its macro-controller system, but wasn’t able to try it out. The handling is straight forward and definitively a plus in terms of workflow and setting up new effect chains. This little tool offers a lot of new possibilities in regards to sounddesign and direct sound control while using Guitar Rig live. Especially, when you are using it in conjunction with some sort of a MIDI controller, this gives you a lot of control over the sound and effect chains. Although I’m not sure, how well this would work for a regular guitarist. But everyone, who has his hands free enough to turn some encoders, will probably make good use of this – a great addition.
It’s not that much of a suprise that Guitar Rig doesn’t re-invent itself, but it doesn’t need to do that, because the new effects and tools show that the end of the development is not reached yet. Especially since quite a number of new products seem to be Guitar Rig based such as the new compressor suite or the Reflektor convolution reverb, it seems that there is be probably a good number of new tools and effects for this plattform already waiting to be released. Let’s hope that Native Instruments keeps it more to the guitar side and doesn’t bloat this too much with tools that could have been easily be released as an idenpendent plugin or effect
Anyways, Guitar Rig 5 is a versatile plugin that keeps up the great reputation it already has. As its former versions, it is available as a standalone application and as an AU, VST and RTAS plugins as well for OS X and for Windows.
